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46 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.18
most immigrants settling in the area came from Germany and
Ireland, with a few from England. As the number of German and
Irish households declined from 1900 to 1920, the percentage of
immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia rose. Bader says Russell
was a diverse, eclectic area, a mix of working-class and upper-class
white and African-American families.
In 1890, a tornado tore into Russell and then east through
downtown. A few years later came a financial crisis, the worst in
United States history at the time. It was the result of inflation,
heavy farm debts and falling crop prices. In the spring of 1893,
the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage
Company, two of America's largest employers, collapsed, setting
off financial panic in banks and the stock market. Unemployment
soared. More than 400 banks suspended operations as they struggled
to meet withdrawal requests, selling assets and calling in loans,
which resulted in the bankruptcy of more than 15,000 businesses.
Bader says that Russell grew into "one of the worst slums" in
Louisville, blemished by poverty, residents packed into unsafe
tenement housing. By the Great Depression, with so many
working-class Americans out of a job, low-rent public housing
surfaced as a way to help. In the early 1940s, Beecher Terrace was
built for blacks and Clarksdale, in the Phoenix Hill neighborhood,
was built for whites, at a combined cost of about $5 million.
Both projects were lauded not only for addressing a housing issue
but also for clearing out what had become notorious, dangerous
neighborhoods. Down went the old, up went the two-story, boxy
buildings that have now met their own expiration date.
Baxter Square, that's one site within Beecher Terrace that will
remain untouched as renovation occurs. It is home to a spray
park, basketball courts and a community center, and Bader and her
team were curious about the open, green space. In 1880, this park
— Louisville's first public park — was built atop Louisville's first
public burial ground. Bader wondered: Are gravesites still there?
According to an 1870 Courier-Journal article, relatives of those
buried at the Baxter Square burial site had an option to relocate
Madison Original Ale was bottled in Louisville, but the glass bottle
itself came from an 1800s glass factory — Star Glass Works in
New Albany, Indiana.
An elegant plastic comb, dating to the mid-1800s, when
plastics and other synthetic materials were just becoming
more widely available.